Be Kind, Rewind: The early VHS rental stores in Corpus Christi’s past
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In the 1970s, the first ads began appearing in the Caller-Times for the newest home entertainment system, VCRs. Record the TV programs and games you might miss and watch them later, for around $1,000 (more than $5,000 in 2023 dollars)? An amazing concept!
But the other big draw of the home VCR was the VHS rental market. Why spend money on a night on the town when you could watch both classic and recent films from the comfort of your home?
Having access to these older films was especially a draw, as movie goers generally had to wait for movie studios to re-release older films in the theaters, or watch an edited version on broadcast television, often shortened to fit in specific time slot, broken up for commercials and cleaned up for the youngest viewing audience.
Corpus Christi had a number of early options for rentals in the early 1980s. In a Feb. 14, 1982, article the Caller-Times gave a rundown on the local businesses reeling in the profits from VHS rentals (and Betamax, which hadn’t been fully trounced by VHS yet).
Les Feldser’s Movie Club was operated out of the Les Feldser Discount Marts, rent-to-own furniture and appliance stores with several locations around town. Feldser expanded into VHS rentals when VCRs came on the market and created the membership club, a common practice at the time, boasting about 3,200 titles available to rent. You became an automatic member of the club if you purchased your VCR from the store, but others could join for a one-time $189 fee. Users then could select up to 2 movies to borrow, and then could exchange for $2 per week. Feldser, who considered himself a failed inventor, created his own cataloging software with his wife and the company’s lead programmer to track the company’s rentals and eventually sold the software for an undisclosed amount when he retired.
More: #TBT: Les Feldser pioneered the Corpus Christi video rental market in 1979
Craig’s Record Factory on South Padre Island Drive didn’t just sell records, cassettes and concert tickets: you could also rent movies. No membership was required, but you had to leave either a check or credit card slip filled out for the amount of the video you were renting ($75 was the average). You could then select from one of their hundreds of titles available and pay a $3.50 rental fee for the first day, and $2 for any additional days.
Tape Town Audio & Video, also on South Padre Island Drive, also had the same rental and deposit fees as Craig’s, but didn’t limit you to a maximum of three videos at a time. You could select from about 300 titles, conveniently displayed in glass cases, a feature the reporter found particularly handy.
Video Magic on Weber Road had more than 800 videos available for rent, with both member and non-member deals. Members could rent for $3 the first day and $2 any subsequent days, with nonmembers paying $4 a day. Nonmembers also had to pay the $50 returnable deposit for each video. This was also one of the first stores to open that was solely a video rental business.
More: Dr. Bela Zarbo provided schlocky thrills with Wide Scream Theatre in 1970s
CC Brick & Lumber on North Staples Street also offered movie rentals, again with no membership, but the price was cheaper to rent a movie on a weekday than a weekend. Tapes were $2.95 a night on Monday through Thursday, but jumped to $3.95 on Fridays and Saturdays. And, interestingly, movies from Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox were more expensive, costing $4.50 per day and $5.50 on Saturdays.
Video Concepts in Sunrise Mall was the only chain video store at first, in the days before Hollywood Video and Blockbuster. They also offered a membership service, with a one-time fee at levels of $29.90, $39.90 and $49.90, which was good at locations around the country. Renters also paid a one-time deposit, either $50, $100 or $150, that was returned when the membership was cancelled. Video Concepts also had locations inside Eckerd Drugs.
There were a number of other stores through the years, like Vista Video and Record Shop on Baldwin Boulevard, one of the first to carry Spanish-language tapes, Video Star with multiple locations around the city, and some may even remember HEB’s in-house video stores, HEB Video Central.
Most of the mom-and-pop stores eventually died out as the Blockbuster Videos took over, before even those were overtaken by Netflix’s mail order DVDs, and then streaming services. I now get to try to explain to my young kids what “Be Kind, Rewind” even means, and why I say “taping” when recording something on video.
Allison Ehrlich writes about things to do in South Texas and has a weekly Throwback Thursday column on local history.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Be Kind, Rewind: VHS rentals in Corpus Christi’s past
